Hydrogels beads of alginate/seaweed powder for plants nutrition

BRENDA MAZZOLA; ADRIEL LARSEN; ROMINA OLLIER; LEANDRO LUDUEÑA; VERA ALVAREZ; JIMENA GONZÁLEZ

Lisboa

Conferencia; 18th International Conference on Materials and Engineering Technology ICMET 2016; 2016

Seaweed is a natural renewable resource with great potential that is not being used by the domestic industry. Here,it was used a kind of invasive algae U. Pinnatifida that causes serious ecological damage on the Argentinian coasts. Alginate isone of the most widely used materials for encapsulation, and has the advantage that is a natural polysaccharide derived from amarine plant. It can form thermally stable hydrogel in the presence of calcium cation. In addition, the hydrogel can be easilyproduced into particulate form by using simple and gentle method. The aim of this work was to obtain and to characterizenovel compounds (alginate/seaweed powder) for the soil nutrition. Alginate water solutions were prepared by concentrations of20, 30, 40 and 50 g/L, in those solutions 10g/L of seaweed powder was added. Then the dispersions were transferred from abeaker to the atomizer by a peristaltic pump (with 0.05 to 0.1 L/h flow). A tank was filled with 1 L of calcium chloride solution(4 g/L), and the solution was agitated with a magnetic stirrer. The beads were analyzed by means TGA, FTIR and swellingdeterminations. In addition, the improvements in the soil were qualitative measured. It was obtained beads with differentdiameters depend on the initial concentration and the flow used. A better dispersions of seaweed and optimal diameter for theplant nutrition applications were obtained for 40g/L concentration and 0.1 L/h flow. The beads show thermal stability and highswelling degree. It can be successfully obtained alginate beads with seaweed powder with a novelty application as plantnutrient.